S1E88 - Woven Ends on Death & Dying pt. II

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is rejoined by Wōen and Roxanne from the Woven Ends Collective to talk about death, dying, and the work of death doulas.

Host Info

Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Live Like the World is Dying: Woven Ends on Death & Dying pt. II

Inmn 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today again Inmn Neruin and I use they/them pronouns. We're back again this week to finish up our chat with Wōen and Roxy from the Woven Ends Collective to talk about death and dying. I'm not sure exactly where the episode got cut in half, but today we're probably going to hear a lot more about caring for people who are dying and the work of a death doula. Like last week, we're talking about some heavy stuff but in the spirit of building more resilient communities that can prepare for the end times together in all ways. And again, we hope that conversations like this can help shift how people talk about death and dying. And, we don't want to bring this stuff up to either romanticize death or to incite fear of death. It's just going to happen. And I know I would like for my circles to have all the resources that they need when I die. And oh please, god, don't embalm me. I really, really, really want to rot. Does this count as a power of attorney? As we learned last week, no, it does not. Content warning again. At some point we talked about the idea of choosing to die from the perspective of being terminally ill. But before we go into it, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo [Singing the words like a melody]

Molotov Now 01:48 Yeah, welcome to Molotov Now, a podcast about taking action.

Molotov Now 01:59 In Molotov Now, we analyze and discuss news articles and stories of resistance from around the globe and connect them to our struggles here at home in Aberdeen, Washington.

Molotov Now 02:09 In the spirit of building solidarity between the rural and the urban, we hope to inspire direct action in the face of oppression and to light a fire to find each other in the darkness.

Inmn 02:29 So what is kind of the pathway from like, say that I die tomorrow--I die in a hospital--like what is the pathway between like, I die in a hospital and my friends bury me in our home cemetery? Like, how does the possession of my remains work? Like, in Little Miss Sunshine, are people gonna have to pay to get my corpse? Like, can they get my corpse? Like, how does that work?

Wōen 03:04 Yeah, so you don't...you know, whoever is the designated person, so either the next of kin legally or the legally designated healthcare power of attorney who was also your power of attorney over your disposition, they will have the rights to your body, and you do not have to...If you die at a hospital, you're not going to have to pay to have the body released to you. What normally happens is the hospital will give a family a list of funeral homes, and then from there you'd call the funeral home, then the funeral home will do all the transportation. And then, you often won't even see that exchange from the hospital to the funeral home. You'd go to the funeral home and make arrangements and go from there. But, as the person with the rights, you can do all of that yourself. You can go pick them up and drive them to where they need to be. It's--and this is where like educating around things like bodily care and home funerals is really important--because there are logistical things you need to think about with transportation and caring for the body at home. And so, it can be a little daunting to do on your own, but, you know, if there's a lot of people supporting you, it's actually not very hard. Like, the intimidation factor is the hardest part. And, you know, having a vehicle that can get you home and a space where you can do the burial, those are really the next parts. And we all kind of know inherently how to do these rituals. Like once you enter into that space, it's really beautiful like how people just like fall into these different roles that they feel really confident in. And, yeah. So I would say, you know, if you're not going on that normal mode from hospital to funeral home to cemetery, like having a lot of people involved to care for the process is...Yeah, it's very doable and beautiful.

Inmn 05:52 Cool. Will--this is a weird logistical question, but I feel like this is kind of, you know, what we're here for--like, say, if I die, and I die in a hospital and like, say my family, chosen family, support network, which, you know, whoever it is, and we're trying to do like a home burial and they're not ready to, you know, take possession of my body, like will the hospital hold on to it for a little while? In like a refrigerator? Like, what if they're not ready for it? What if they like...you know, obviously, I just died. Maybe they need a week to deal with it. But, they don't want me embalmed and want to take possession of my remains.

Wōen 06:54 I can't say the exact timeline, I think it's probably a different state by state, but there is a limit on how long a person can stay at a hospital morgue. So that's a good thing to know where you are. But, another good thing to know is that often you can work with funeral homes to just do transportation or cold storage to give you time. And so I think that would be the best pathway is like, "Okay, we're not ready. Let's call a funeral home and just get them to pick our person up and put them in cold storage. And that will give us time to breathe and figure out what we need to do. And then from there, like you can ask them to, you know, transport them to where they need to go or you can pick them up from the funeral home. You can chip away at what the funeral home is offering. And some, you know, sometimes it'll be met with a little resistance. But like, you can have people tasked with advocating, and having more people to negotiate with different parts of the process is really helpful.

Inmn 08:18 Yeah, cool. That is good to know. So I feel like we keep going back to this power of attorney. If I get a medical power of attorney, does that extend to my remains? Like does who has my medical power of attorney also have the rights to the...to my disposition, or?

Wōen 08:50 Yeah, the answer is yes. And, it's important to get a good Advanced Directive. Some Advanced Directives don't have a section for disposition and it's important to get one that does. Because if it doesn't, then that is a situation where there could be like...Yeah, where if it's contested on who has rights, the advance directive could fall short. So, knowing that your Advanced Directive has that part, that section, in it is really important. Not all do and it sucks. So, figuring out that you have the right kind of Advanced Directive, and a lot of them do, but some o